Entry to the Printimus Pinball Cup was by pre-registration, starting in mid-June at €40 ($48/£35) with a reducing scale of discounts for those who signed-up early and a €5 increase every couple of weeks up to a maximum of €55 for registrations made in August.

The poster for the Printimus Pinball Cup 2017

The weekend was organised by Łukasz Dziatkiewicz and Marcin Krysiński. Marcin is the owner of Printimus while Łukasz runs the Printimus Pinball club.

They were joined by the weekend’s special guest – Jack Guarnieri of Jersey Jack Pinball – who had flown in especially for this event. Along with Jack was JJP’s latest game, Dialed In!

The Dialed In! game was supplied by Freddy’s Pinball Paradise in Germany – JJP’s super-distributor in Europe.

The Dialed In! gameJack chats with one of the attendees

The twenty players who took part in the weekend’s competitions each received an impressive pack of promotional printed media including a bookmark, magnet, post cards and entries to the Roger Sharpe Contest and the Pac-Man competition.

The registration pack

There were three full-scale competitive events – the main Printimus Pinball Cup (PPC) tournament, the Classics Tournament and the JJP Tournament. The PPC and JJP tournaments both awarded plaques to the top three finishers, while the four finalists in all tournaments received a mix of prizes from Jack and the weekend’s sponsors.

Prizes for the winnersPlaques for the top three in the Main Tournament and the JJP Tournament

Commemorative mugs were available for 19 Zloty or €5

Finally, there was a casual Pac-Man Contest held on a home multi-game system. This was just for fun with no prizes at stake.

Playing the Pac-Man games

Free tea, coffee and water were supplied, while a local beer could be purchased for 5 Zloty ($1.38/€1.17/£1.02) per bottle.

The beer of choice – Tyskie from the town of Tychy, about 30km from Bytom

The main PPC tournament ran across Saturday and Sunday, with qualifying on Saturday and the field split into two divisions for their respective play-offs on Sunday.

Łukasz welcomed everybody

A match-play format was used for qualifying where every contestant played a single game against everyone else. With 20 players that meant 19 rounds which were initially played one-at-a-time, with all games in a round needing to be completed and the results entered into the computer system before the next round could begin.

Marcin explains the tournament format in English

The Classics Tournament ran alongside the PPC with players fitting-in qualifying attempts between rounds of the PPC and in a brief 30-minute window once the PPC play-offs had concluded.

Rafal was in charge of the results systemPPC tournament matches and results on the left, Classics and the JJP tournaments on the right

Once all the questions had been answered and the formats were fully understood, play in the PPC began at around 11:30 on Saturday.

Any questions about the format?

Let’s play pinball!

Qualifying in the Main Tournament

Machines were randomly allocated, while choice of play order was decided by a coin-toss. A single game was played with the winner returning to the tournament desk to record their win. On average it was taking around 25 minutes per round, so with 19 rounds and meal breaks to factor-in, the qualifying phase would be running late into the night.

The Classics Tournament’s qualifying also began on Saturday morning, continuing until 30 minutes after the end of the Main Tournament’s play-offs on Sunday, after which the Classics play-offs could take place. This tournament used the eight older electromechanical and solid-state machines in the back-left corner of the room:

Bronco

Evel Knievel

Haunted House

Jungle Queen

Mata Hari

Sinbad

Space Invaders

Spirit of 76

Qualifying used an unlimited buy-in format where each entry consisted of a single game on any four of the eight machines available. The set of four scores formed the entry with ranking points earned for each score. All entries counted which meant it was possible to knock your best entry down if you had, say, a later entry with one great score but three poor ones.

One Classics Tournament entry was included with PPC registration, while others could be bought for 5 Zloty each. When the initial entry was collected or when further entries were purchased from the front deak, the player had to choose which four machines would be played. Their scores were recorded on a tablet which was pre-loaded with the four game selections. The top eight players qualified for the semi-finals which would be played on Sunday evening just as soon as the extra qualifying period following the PPC play-offs was over.

Classic machines at the end of the left bank

There was also a JJP Tournament, held on the three Jersey Jack Pinball machines – The Wizard of Oz, The Hobbit and Dialed In!.

Qualifying in the JJP Tournament

This followed a similar format to the Classics Tournament, except that an entry consisted on one game on each of the three JJP titles. Again, one entry was included but further entries could be purchased for 5 Zloty.

Jack is interviewed for the local TV

After the first few rounds of the Printimus Pinball Cup has been played, it was time for lunch.

A vegan meal was cooked and served in the kitchen area, while those who preferred something meaty could order from a local restaurant’s take-away menu and have the food delivered to Printimus. We chose the vegan soup and burger from Mihiderka.

Saturday lunch – pumpkin soup followed by different types of vegan burgersThe vegan burgers from Mihiderka were as tasty as they looked

Later in the day we had a vegan curry with rice, while on Sunday vegan pizza was served for lunch and again in the evening.

Mushroom and onion vegan pizza

Although the PPC rounds were proceeding according to plan, the breaks for lunch and dinner meant a late finish was on the cards. So, Marcin and Rafal printed out the pairings for the final half-dozen rounds so everyone could get on with their matches as soon as both players were ready rather than waiting for everyone to finish each round. The only exception was the very last qualifying round which everyone played together.

The ten players with the most wins would form the A Division on Sunday, while the bottom ten made up the B Division. Additionally, the number of wins each player had would carry forward into the play-offs, meaning the more wins you had the better your chance of progressing into the semi-finals.

When all the matches were over, these were the two divisions (in alphabetical order):

The Dialed In! machine needed to return to Freddy’s by Sunday lunchtime, so the semi-finals and finals of the JJP Tournament were played on Saturday night.

The semi-finals of the JJP Tournament

The format was similar to qualifying, with the eight players divided into two groups of four to play a single four-player game on each machine. Points were awarded with the winner of each game earning seven points, second place got five points, there were three points for third place and one point for fourth.

After all three games had been played, the top two from each group went into the final which was played in the same way.

The four finalists were Artur Natorski, Daniel Maczurek, Martin Ayub and Rich Mallett.

Daniel put up a strong performance on all three machines to take first place. Martin’s grand champion score on The Wizard of Oz was enough to give him second place, ahead of Rich in third and Artur in fourth.

The presentations were held over until Sunday morning when the Dialed In! machine was packed away for its journey back to Germany.

Dialed In! is Packed Away!

Then Łukasz and Marcin got ready to present the plaques and prizes to the top four in the JJP Tournament.

With the growth of his Mihiderka vegan catering business (there are currently four restaurants operating in Poland with more in the pipeline) Marcin’s printing business – Printimus – is no longer the main focus of his business interests. Indeed, the lower storey of the Printimus building is being turned into the main kitchen for Mihiderka, so the dropping of the Printimus name for the pinball operation seemed logical.

Jack thanks Marcin for the renaming of Printimus Pinball to the Jersey Jack Pinball Flipper Club

Then the awards in the JJP Tournament were made.

Fourth place in the JJP Tournament, Artur NatorskiThird place, Rich MallettSecond place, Martin AyubWinner of the JJP Tournament, Daniel MaczurekAll the top four got to pick prizes from the pile

It is customary to make an award to the Most Stylish Player in the tournaments, someone chosen for their unique play style. This time the recipient was chosen by Jack and it was Szymon Marciniszyn who earned a copy of the video adventure game Beat Cop from 11-Bit Studios who were one of the PPC weekend’s sponsors.

Winner of the Most Stylish Player award, Szymon Marciniszyn

There were piles of promotional JJP material, including flyers, posters and pictures. Players were invited to take one of each as a souvenir of the weekend.

Łukasz thanks the sponsors and says everyone can help themselves to posters, flyers and picturesJJP posters, flyers and promotional pictures

Then came the play-offs for the Printimus Pinball Cup. The ten players in each division played another nine rounds of match-play games – one game against every other player in the same division. The number of wins in this stage was combined with the wins from qualifying to determine the four from each division who would contest their respective finals.

The A and B Division play-offsMarcin aims the gun ball shooter on Terminator 2

Players check their positions

The four finalists in the A Division were Daniel Maczurek, David Mainwaring, Martin Ayub and Rafal Bytomski. In the B Division they were Jerzy Weglarz, Marcin Krysinski, Piotr Kochanski and Szymon Marciniszyn.

Then it was back to the Classics Tournament for the semi-finals and the final. Only the top eight players qualified and they were split into two groups of four to play four machines with 7-5-3-1 points awarded according to position. The top two from each group went into the final. They were Greg Mott, Martin Ayub, Rafal Bytomski and Rich Mallett.

Each player could choose a machine to play which meant the final was contested on Haunted House, Spirit of 76, Mata Hari and Genie.

The final of the Classics TournamentRafal Bytomski playing in the Classics Tournament finalA stuck ball on Haunted House in the final

Rich was in great form, winning the first three games on Mata Hari, Haunted House and Spirit of 76, giving himself an unassailable lead. Greg and Martin had the same number of points but Greg took second place for having won on the last game, Genie, with Martin third and Rafal fourth.

As with the Classics Tournament final, each player in the A Division final got to choose a machine to play in the four-game series.

David, as the highest qualifier, got to choose first and picked Whitewater. Martin picked Attack from Mars, Daniel selected Revenge from Mars, while Rafal opted for High Speed 2: The Getaway. A 4-2-1-0 scoring system would be used in each game, but the total number of wins from the qualifying and play-offs were also carried into the final, giving David a 2 point lead over Martin, who had a 1 point lead over Rafal who himself had a 1 point lead over Daniel.

David starts the final of the Main Tournament

David’s choice proved to be a good one, as he won on Whitewater. Daniel was second, Martin third and Rafal fourth.

Play then moved on to Revenge from Mars, but the game didn’t play too nicely for Rafal who chose it.

Daniel plays his choice of Revenge from Mars

Instead, it was Martin who won this, before moving on to start on his choice of Attack from Mars.

Rafal plays on Martin’s choice of Attack from Mars

The last game was Getaway and again the machine wasn’t kind to the player who chose it, Daniel. David put up a leading 90M total in the player two position and by this stage only Martin as player four could catch him and win the final.

The final game was High Speed 2: The Getaway

After two bad balls, Martin’s 8M score going into the final ball didn’t look promising. While he did get to play the third ball a little, his 67M end-of-game total wasn’t enough, leaving David as the overall winner. Martin was second, Daniel third and Rafal fourth.

The top three all won plaques (bronze, silver or gold), copies of the Beat Cop game and passes to the Budapest Pinball Museum. In addition, all players received cars with codes to download the Tower 57 shooter game from 11-Bit Studios.

The final of the PPC brought the weekend’s procedings to a close. Events wrapped up at the fairly reasonable time of around 8:30pm, allowing a little time for celebrations in the town of Bytom.

The winners of the three tournaments, Rich, David and Daniel, with Jack and Łukasz

This was a significant and transitionary event for Printimus Pinball. The attendance of Jack Guarnieri added a level of cachet and international recognition to the weekend, as well as giving all the visitors the chance to play his company’s new game and talk to the boss. In the days after the tournaments, Łukasz and Marcin took Jack on a tour of Poland, showing him pinball and cultural locations across the country.

We enjoyed our weekend in Bytom, and appreciated the earlier finishing times each day – especially on Sunday when our return flight meant getting a taxi to the airport at 4am.

Thanks to Łukasz and Marcin for organising everything, to Mirek for fixing any problems with the machines, and to Rafal for the scoring system.

For the final weekend in October, we head up England’s North-West coast to the city …

3 weeks ago

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One Comment

Ben Logan

December 10, 2017 at 2:37 pm

Amazing coverage of this event. Wish we had vegan catering here in town. Love the club name change mid-event. Way to stay so close to the action, Pinball News. I loved reading this. Fantastically detailed.

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